6 comments:

He's been rehired into R&D and since Mike has moved on and everyone else is gone I would say he will head up the Dept. I can't see him being just a part time flunky when he has his own thing going (including the re-release of Ptolus).

How this is going to go is anybody's guess at this point.

One thing: It certainly makes WotC look like a bunch of backsliders and the repsonse has already been negative from most camps.

I don't think WotC can do anything at this point to restore confidence in the players. I think there are way to many other options these days for them to ever get control back. I mean, when you run off that many people and continue to do the things that ran them off in the first place then I don't see what they can do.

I also noticed, while reading the article about the 4e player that tries out 1st edition AD&D that Greyhawk Grognard linked to yesterday, that Kim Mohan is apparently the managing editor of Dragon "Magazine" again. My wife thinks the OSR is more powerful than we think we are with the marketing people at WotC/Hasbro.

We are uncountable, that's the problem. I think that Paizo grabbed a large share of the current market but there are a lot of folks still playing 3x and then with all the OSR / indie activity it's up in the air.

Earlier in the year just before it was announced that Paizo had pulled ahead of Wizards I was looking at an article that showed a 53/47 split with 4e on the bottom, making it the first time in the history of D&D that the current version was not the biggest piece of the pie.

I think we may amount to as much as 20-30% of the market at this point.

And the question I asked everyone before was if you don't think Wizards is feeling the pain from us why would they release the most retro package they could find last year with the Red Box-an exact replica of the largest selling D&D item is its history?

I have read over 500 responses to this news of Monte today and it is overwhelming negative. I really don't think they can win this. If you change the game you lose what's left of your base and if the fish don't take the bait all you end up with is a can half full of worms.

The brother will i) come in, have coffeeii) chart a 5E roadmap,iii) stop using Legends and Lore and that crappy column poll as an indicator of "what players want" and set up a decent, real player feedback, crowdsourcing design to 5Eiv) while doing that, I predict he will lead negotiations to handover/sale of the D&D franchise for pen-and-paper RPGs (ex-boardgames) to Paizo.v) It WILL be a step back - at least one genuine simplified OSR-type/BECMI-type aimed at kidsvi) An AD&D-like "full version" with a Pathfinder-like, 3-book core with 3E classes, canon races restored to their place in ONE proper set, not placing the core/canon rulebooks on a PHB1/2/3 format.vii) A return to serialised modules, campaign settings including restoring some of the classics like Blackmoor and Greyhawkviii) Solve world peace and hunger... in that order

I'd be more interested in any potential 5E that wasn't being developed by a guy who developed 3E. I've seen that game already. And frankly, Pathfinder has that game and it's fans covered now and is doing very well. Trying to make D&D into that version again would be a mistake.

About Me

Greg is a boastful, hammer-wielding, red-bearded dwarf who started playing D&D in the early 1980s when hooked by the Red Box. When he's not obsessed with D&D he poses as a sleep-deprived professor of popular culture.